POINT OF VIEW: ‘Experience’ – can Carmelites afford to reelect the experienced incumbent team?

Several letters to the editor writers, particularly Pat Sippel, Erik Davidson, Corky Duke, Herschel Peak, and David Sharp cite the “experience” of the incumbents Mayor Sue McCloud and Council Members Paula Hazdovac and Gerard Rose as the reason the incumbent “team” deserves to be reelected to the City Council in 2010. Yet, excluded and unmentioned incumbents’ experience includes the following:

• Experience of either being ignorant of facts they should have known or being knowledgeable about the facts and prevaricating to the Editorial Board of The Monterey County Herald regarding the issue of what Judge Larry E. Hayes meant in his ORDER AFTER HEARING, signed 3 February 2010, involving the claims of four senior City employees, claims similar to on-leave Human Resources Manager Jane Miller, of “hostile” work environment, gender-based discrimination and forced retirement between 2003 and 2008.

• Experience in knowing of attorney Michael Stamp’s representations of four senior City employees from 2003 and 2008 yet approving taxpayer monies towards filing a motion to disqualify attorney Michael Stamp from representing on-leave Human Resources Manager Jane Miller in 2009. City contentions on the motion were deemed “not credible,” “contradicted by the testimony offered by Plaintiff and by documentary evidence” and the City “failed to establish that the City’s delays were in good faith under the totality of the circumstances,” according to Judge Larry E. Hayes, who denied the City’s motion.

• Experience allowing Assistant City Administrator/City Clerk Heidi Burch to make a declaration in the Jane Miller case which was characterized as “materially false, stretched and exaggerated the truth, and grossly mischaracterized documents” and “not admissible because there was an insufficient foundation for any opinion.”

• Experience in not taking the City’s Sexual Harassment Policy seriously, minimizing and/or ignoring complaints of City employees regarding a “hostile” work environment, gender-based discrimination and forced retirement and not promptly investigating complaints with impartial and thorough investigations, et cetera.

• Experience in misleading reporters/staff writers to believe that the mayor is presently in settlement discussions with the Flanders Foundation attorney when early on no substantive progress was possible because Mayor Sue McCloud was unwilling to consider any option that did not involve the sale of the Flanders Mansion property.

• Experience in not being accountable to constituents by failing to explain how it was that the City reneged on its promise to Building Official John Hanson and his family regarding pay differential and benefits while serving as a California National Guard reservist in Afghanistan.

• Experience in not being accountable to constituents by failing to renovate the Forest Theatre according to the City’s own announced timetable and failing to have consultant William Camille present his final report to the public at a City Council meeting within the one month period as prescribed in the contract.

• Experience in not being accountable to constituents by failing to budget for and implement ADA improvements to the Scout House for the purpose of reopening the Scout House to historic user groups and other organizations.

• Experience in delaying a decision to implement a long-term fire protection services solution for the Carmel Fire Department in the context of the Citygate Associates Fire Department Consolidation Feasibility Analysis for the Cities of Monterey, Pacific Grove and Carmel, Final Report, 2007.

• Experience in violating Municipal and State laws with regard to the selling of the Flanders Mansion property and continuing to proceed with sale after Flanders 1 without the mayor inviting proposals for the environmentally superior alternative of lease use of Flanders Mansion and/or negotiating in good faith with the Flanders Foundation.

• Experience in installing Sunset Cultural Center, Inc., a non-profit organization, without ascertaining whether or not there was a public consensus supporting a non-profit organization managing Sunset Center as the City’s Interim Executive Director promised he would do as he most important task.

With all the aforementioned experience of the incumbent “team,” can Carmelites and the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea financially, legally and ethically afford another two year term for Mayor Sue McCloud and another four year term for Council Members Paula Hazdovac and Gerard Rose, respectively?